Well, with the festival scene finally completed, and the pop culture world finally at peace (for now), I’ve finally had a chance to watch more movies and TV! That’s right, I’ve managed to get out to the theater, make some rentals, and quietly relax at home with the best pop culture has to offer. With that in mind, expect two reviews early this week: The Goldfinch and Hustlers. I don’t want to give too much away about the two newest releases, but I will say this: one of these films is amongst the more boring I’ve ever seen, and the other is one of the most fun you’ll have at the theaters in 2019. I’m not saying which is which, but I think you know.

I also managed to catch a matinee Anniversary showing of The Little Mermaid on the big screen this week, and I came to two realizations. One, being a twenty-something male with facial hair sitting in an empty theater watching a children’s cartoon is probably going to get me arrested one of these days. And two, The Little Mermaid is a film that needs the big screen experience. I had never been a major fan of the film that saved Disney – something about the story just never enticed me the way, say, Beauty and the Beast did. But holy hell, do the colors pop and the music work when presented in a theater. And while I’ll always insist that “Kiss The Girl” is a better sequence than “Under the Sea,” the latter sequence is cinematic magic on the big screen. And Ariel is easily Disney’s best princess, while Ursula is easily Disney’s best villain (or at least up there with Maleficent and Scar). God, this film works in every single way. Meanwhile, from 2019, I also had a chance to see Missing Link, the newest stop-motion Laika film. It was…good, but man was it a letdown after the game-changing Kubo and the Two Strings. It felt like a direct-to-DVD Disney film from the aughts, not an animated fable by a studio at the top of their game. I also continued the Marvel Marathon with Avengers: Age of Ultron, a film I consider one of the lesser Marvel films, and guess what? It almost pissed my parents off to the point of quitting the project! Yeah, it’s kind of worse than I remember, even though I do love the Jeremy Renner stuff in it (and…that’s about it). Thankfully, my father and I did bond over a mutual hatred of Aaron Taylor-Johnson, deserved or otherwise. And in honor of the Full Moon Friday the 13th, I started my Sacred Walloween project early and watched Friday the 13th: Part 2. Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed this one. Sure, it’s dumb, and every horror movie cliché comes from this film, but things were actually a bit more interesting this time around, and at least half the characters are memorable. I even dug Jason as a villain, something I never thought I’d say, considering the vast chasm between the first film and the 2009 iteration. If you like cheesy-bad horror films, you could do worse than this one.

On TV, I played things pretty straightforward. Of course I watched the newest episode of Succession, which was not only hilarious, but appropriately tense (Cherry Jones is great on this show). I also finished off GLOW season 3, which is my least favorite of the bunch, but is also more a testament to its greatness than to the show’s actual quality (it averages out around a B+/A- compared to Season 1’s A and Season 2’s A+). Because I love a certain scene to an insane degree, I went out to find How I Met Your Mother’s “Slap Bet,” which never disappoints (“Everybody come and play…”). And in order to complete my newest listicle, I went back and watched my Top Ten episodes of SpongeBob, to make sure I had material to write about. Oh, and I also read that Caroline Calloway piece in The Cut, which was thoroughly entertaining and simultaneously infuriating to someone who hates influences with a passion.

That concludes this week’s What I Watched, What You Watched! I probably won’t have those reviews up in time for tomorrow, but I wouldn’t rule out Tuesday and Wednesday as potential drop dates! And should everything go according to plan, I may have a long-overdue surprise for you all before the month of September ends. In the meantime, feel free to comment below with your thoughts on all the content I’ve been binging, as well as what you’ve been watching – I need new shows, people! Succession’s only on for a few more weeks! See you all soon!

Travis Burgess is the Founder, Writer and Chief Editor at Sacred Wall. Graduating in 2016 from the College of Wooster with a Degree in English and a Minor in Film Studies, Travis decided to use his encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture to inform the world, and turn his critical eye towards his true passions.